Anti-immigration tirades leave bad taste in the mouth

EVERYONE who feared that Italy’s EU presidency spelt bad news for the Union was proved right yesterday (2 July). Silvio Berlusconi resorted to crass buffoonery by suggesting that German Socialist MEP Martin Schulz should play the role of a Nazi concentration camp guard in a Holocaust movie.

Later, the prime minister tried to downplay his comments as an ironic joke. Yet the real irony is that here was a leader who has made unholy alliances with far-right politicians likening Schulz, a veteran civil liberties advocate, to a fascist.

Sitting alongside Berlusconi in his ruling coalition is deputy premier Gianfranco Fini, whose Alleanza Nazionale (National Alliance) is a successor of Benito Mussolini’s Fascist Party. Fini has gone to considerable lengths to reconstruct himself as a moderate, but the same cannot be said for cabinet colleague Umberto Bossi, minister for reforms and devolution.

A Council of Europe report published last year scathingly denounced Bossi’s Lega Nord (Northern League) party, stating that its activists “have made a particularly intense use of racist and xenophobic propaganda”.

Needless to say, Bossi and Berlusconi dismissed such criticism but the facts show the Lega Nord has no problem hopping onto a racist bandwagon. During its 2001 election campaign, for example, it staged mass rallies, at which immigrants were equated with criminals.

One rally was planned due to claims that an Albanian immigrant had murdered a mother and son in the northern Italian town of Novi Ligure – but the protest was called off abruptly when it emerged that a native Italian was behind the killings.

Last month Bossi was quoted as calling for boats carrying immigrants to be shot out of the water. He subsequently insisted that his comments had been misrepresented. However, Bossi remains an unapologetic anti-immigration firebrand.

He wants Justice Minister Giuseppe Pisanu to step down for allegedly failing to ensure that an immigration law, which Bossi and Fini wrote jointly in 2002, is enforced. Equal parts draconian and unrealistic, the law makes it compulsory for all immigrants to carry a work permit before arriving in Italy. The only thing that can be said in its favour is that it is less outrageous than some of Bossi’s previous ideas – such as building a 240-kilometre wall along the country’s frontier with soon-to-be EU state Slovenia.

So when Italian ministers talk about making immigration issues one of the priorities for their EU presidency, everyone concerned about human rights should be nervous.

European Commission President Romano Prodi is among those who have recently sought to accentuate the positive aspects of immigration by highlighting how it can boost multiculturalism and economic growth. Indeed, some observers of the Italian economy have argued an increase in immigration is needed in Bossi’s stomping ground of northern Italy to make up for a shortfall in labour needs.

Yet a summary of the Italian presidency’s aims posted on its website this week casts immigration in an entirely negative light. It says “the fight against international terrorism must be accompanied by effective measures to combat transnational crime and illegal immigration”.

By coupling references to immigration and terrorism, the Berlusconi government is insinuating that fleeing poverty in Africa or Asia is akin to planting a bomb on a crowded shopping street. Drawing such parallels is a grave affront to people such as the 200 who perished last month, as a ship overladen with immigrants bound for Europe sunk off Tunisia.

The asylum and immigration dossiers are complex ones, which require sober analysis and reasoned debate. Unfortunately, we can expect little of either from an Italian government, which seeks to criminalize those who seek a better life for themselves and their families.

Irony looks like it will loom large on the presidency menu in the coming months – judging by Berlusconi’s outburst yesterday.

The supreme irony in how Rome is handling the immigration debate is that Italians have a long tradition of producing immigrants. Hollywood might give a stereotypical portrayal of the contribution Italians and their descendants have made to American life, but the benefits they have brought to US culture are evident in everything from the baseball heroics of Joe DiMaggio to the ballads of Bruce Springsteen.

Maybe Berlusconi and Bossi should reflect on that legacy before they launch their next tirade – ironic or otherwise.

The keynote speaker at the 20th anniversary celebration of the European Medicines Agency offered some challenges to conventional thinking about the next 20 years – including carefully calculated provocations of his hosts.